Another year has passed by, and I still feel like the idea of updating this blog is pretty much alive. I still don't quite know why; what is the purpose or the intended audience of the blog, but that also makes it easier for me. I've noticed that writing is easier when I just ignore the question of "who is going to read this", and just pretend that there is no audience. Maybe that is just another way to cope with the introverted nature of my mind, or maybe also a way to avoid over-thinking. In any case, more blog posts are to come. And I'd guess we will have the picture of the day continued for the year 2026.

The underlying infrastructure is in need of upgrading, but so far I haven't quite felt like spending time with it. But I hope to get it done at some point in the 2026. Also, not sure about the system to give thumbs up - I don't know but it feels like the numbers are somewhat off because of bots voting more than humans do. I'd like to keep a simple way to "like" contents, but I'm not sure how much time and effort I'm willing to spend with battling the bots. I need to think about this.

And then some other minor themes which have been loitering around in my mind, in no particular order;

Qigong. Yes, I'm still doing it on regular basis, (almost) every morning. It feels good and helps me to feel ready to face the world. But it has not (yet) contributed to developing a routine of more active physical exercise. On the bottom of all this there is something like the ultimate and hard-to-verbalize core of my post-traumatic mindset. A bit simplified; although I no more feel chronically depressed, neither do I feel back to the full vigor I feel I could have. Life often feels a bit like driving a car with the hand-brake stuck on; you need to apply extra effort to get ordinary things done. Lately I've been reading a bit about scientific research on how traumatic events in childhood affect not only the mind, but also the metabolism on biological cell level. That feels like a theoretical framework to describe how it feels to be in my body. For a number of reasons I do believe that those post-traumatic changes can be either fully or partially reversed, but I'm not always sure what would be the best way to proceed in my case. I remember someone saying "you can't meditate your way out of vitamin B12 deficiency", and it makes sense - sometimes biological unbalance needs to be corrected on the biological level. But that is probably not the whole story ; suppose that the core of a trauma response is a sense of safety being shattered; can you restore a sense of safety by jogging and eating healthy, or do you also need to go through some more psychological processes? These are big themes, I try to write more in the year 2026 /(or later. Sometimes I'm slow, I know.)

Planning by coding. Yes, I think that should've been the title of the previous blog post. As a non-native English speaker, I'm not quite sure what different meanings do words "planning" and "design" carry. Hehe, I was thinking first in Finnish, and translating from that. And in my language the word is "sunnitella", which translates as "to plan" and also as "to design" - when you make a blueprint by pen and paper before actually implementing anything. Well, but words aside, the process in itself is going on and maturing. I've been experimenting with writing code, seeing how it works, then realizing what needs to be different, and then refactoring. With big tasks I find that way easier instead of trying to make exact plans for everything beforehand. At the moment I'm working with the question "OK, so the AI can determine what tools they'd need, and what needs to be done to acquire those tools - but in often happens that they don't have all the time and resources to carry out those plans, so the AI needs a way to prioritize, and to make mid-term and long-term plans in the style of 'this year we make X, in preparation so that in coming years we can make Y'." All of it is still a bit messy, but I have a feeling that it isn't a blind alley but that there is a way forward.

Money and the stress levels. I don't remember exactly how much I've written about this, and what I've been just thinking inside my head, or mentioned in private discussions or in Discord. So, just to make sure, a little summary here in the blog. Since the summer of 2025 Ancient Savo sales haven't been anything substantial, so I've been picking more of the odd jobs to sustain myself. So far it has felt like an okay solution; I have not collapsed back to unhealthy stress levels. The indie development has been a bit slower compared to the time when I was working less and not earning quite enough to pay the monthly living costs. But I feel like all the years of active coding left me feeling more confident, and having a stronger habit of regular coding. Also, I've greatly enjoyed the opportunity to experiment with all the coding ideas I've had. Like the in-game AI ; I have a feeling that once I get it up and running in the context of Ancient Savo, the same principles can be adapted and applied to other Enormous Elk games as well. But that would've not happened without sinking all the time to developing Ancient Savo, to get me to the point where I have all the resources and the whole coding playground in my hands. In my memory this connects to some of my blog posts from earlier years, I think I've written about something like frustration of having ideas in my mind but not finding enough time and mental focus to properly work on implementing those ideas. I think this has definitely improved. Although it is still slow, but regular slow progress is a lot better than progress so irregular that it is almost no progress. Hmm, and probably another money post some time later on in the 2026, let's see =)

This much for today. As usual, there are also a whole bunch of other blog ideas roaming free somewhere in the wilderness of my mind. Sometimes they are too quick to be caught in words, but more often they apply the flock defense; grouping together so tightly that they form an unit too big to be written, constantly in synchronized move so that I can't separate a single thought away from the rest of the flock. So it is often the smaller and easier observations which get posted. I'd guess that with the bigger and deeper topics I just need to wait patiently until they themselves arrange in a way which could possibly lend to some of them becoming written down.